Vietnam rejects US lawmakers' religion critique

Asia-Pacific News
May 27, 2009, 5:16 GMT

Hanoi - Vietnam rejected a recent resolution by US lawmakers condemning violations of religious freedom in the communist country, state media reported Wednesday.

Government spokesman Le Dung denounced an amendment to the foreign relations budget bill passed May 20 by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US's House of Representatives. The non-binding amendment recommends the US State Department list Vietnam as a 'country of particular concern' for religious freedom issues.

'This decision by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives goes against the actual situation in Vietnam and does not conform to the developing relations between Vietnam and the United States,' Dung said in a press release.

Dung urged Congress not to pass the amendment, and invited more US congressmen to visit Vietnam to examine the religious freedom situation.

The US designated Vietnam a 'country of particular concern' for religious freedom issues between 2004 and 2006. In recent years the US has said it is satisfied with Vietnam's moves to loosen religious restrictions.

Most Buddhists, Muslims and many mainline Christian denominations worship freely in Vietnam, but all denominations must be registered by the government. The government bans the dissident Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, and human rights groups say it harasses small unregistered Christian churches, particularly in ethnic minority areas.

In a report earlier this month, Human Rights Watch criticized the government for arresting leaders of such unregistered churches. The group also denounced government arrests of activist Buddhist monks belonging to the country's ethnic Khmer minority.

The US amendment was sponsored by two Republicans, Vietnamese-American Congressman Joseph Anh Cao of Louisiana and Congressman Ed Royce of California. Royce's district contains a large community of Vietnamese-American émigrés.

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